New territory for me, we just had a Summa F1612 Flatbed Cutter delivered and for some reason they don't include the PC/Workstation to run it. The "entry" specs are abysmally low, so the sales dude just said "as powerful as you can afford" which really doesn't help either.
I'm tempted to get a slightly beefed up off-the-shelf HP or something, 32GB of RAM, a couple TB drives and a decent mid-range processor. Don't need a dedicated GPU, as it's really not doing any rendering or heavy graphics lifting, right? I know it will use Onyx, but not sure what other software is involved or how intensive those files will be. Am I missing the mark on any of this?
We have a Colex Sharpcut 3HP 5' x 10' flatbed cutter. We don't have a fancy PC shooting to it. Intel 3.3 GHz, 8G ram running Windows 10. I think we only have 250G hard drive but we don't really store anything on it. So we have Onyx 21 on our rip PC that generates and shoots our cut data to hot folders on the Colex PC. When you have very detailed cuts, the processing time can be long but I've never run into any problems. I do run into issues with Onyx generated cut files once in awhile. For example, if I'm cutting a rectangle or square with round corners, it should take no time at all, but it often times, cuts super super slow on one of the 4 sides. If I skip Onyx, it cuts fine. Or sometimes if I output PDF trim boxes from Onyx and my file has zero cut data, the Colex will double cut them. But not always. A fickle bitch Onyx can be.
You will need a software to operate your cutter. There are probably multiple options. You will then have to set up the software in Onyx which was very easy with our cut software (OptiScout). I have customers that want me to print for them but they want to cut the job at their shop (GraphTec cutter). So I will temporarily add their cutter on my Onyx so it prints the reg marks their cutter uses, and then send them the cut files that Onyx generates.
Cool, good to know! Just to be clear, I'm NOT the Operator for this thing. We have a few people already that do all of the large format, they'll be trained to use it so it'll be interesting to see what software they'll be learning. I'll likely check in though, be kinda cool to know & I've already got a few "projects" of my own I want to try out once it's all going.
Of all the machines I've run in my 20+ years in the biz, the Colex is my favorite.
I made 4' storm trooper head table top on 3/4" MDF board when we first got it. I still need to get a base and paint the edges and polyurethane it. Does your cutter have a router? That's where the fun is.
We just purchased a GCC LaserPro Spirit LS. It's a small format laser cutter/etcher - max 18 x 25 in. We cut complex acrylic shapes and etch acrylic, glass & lamacoids. It also came with a rotary attachment so we can etch glasses and Yetis. We just run it with a small PC laptop thru Illy.
That sounds like fun!
Quote from: Skryber on January 11, 2023, 10:51:38 AMOf all the machines I've run in my 20+ years in the biz, the Colex is my favorite.
I made 4' storm trooper head table top on 3/4" MDF board when we first got it. I still need to get a base and paint the edges and polyurethane it. Does your cutter have a router? That's where the fun is.
Oh yeah it'll have a router when the parts arrive. I think it's a separate piece of the install.
Summa installer is onsite tomorrow, I picked up a Dell Optiplex that's likely way over powered but it was tough to find a decent machine running Windows 10 these days, and since I was given the company credit card so I hit up the local Microcenter this weekend. Intel Core i5 12th Gen 12500 3.0GHz, 16GB DDR4 RAM; 256GB NVME – should do the trick!
I'll get pics of the process, hopefully it'll go smoothly.